A refrigerator is a standard appliance found in almost every modern home. The technology discussed below falls into the category of inventory management of foods, beverages, or other items which are commonly stored in a household.
For many households, especially families or those with multiple adults living in the same home, the refrigerator, freezer, and pantry can get disorganized and overfull making it hard to know what exactly is or is not in the refrigerator, freezer, or pantry. When people don't know what food items they have, it can lead to people accidentally purchasing duplicate items, forgetting about items on a shopping list or recipe, or allowing perishable foods to rot and become waste.
There have been attempts at solving this food inventory management problem. However, many current attempts are overly complicated and too expensive to install for the majority of homeowners. Other attempts put too much of a time burden on users, so that it becomes inconvenient to manage the food inventory and users lose motivation to keep up with the system. Still others have no way to communicating to users the inventory when they are not at home and are at the store.